How Oscar Indigo Broke the Universe (And Put It Back Together Again) by David Teague

Author:David Teague
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2017-10-06T04:00:00+00:00

The Twelve-Year-Old Who Struck Out Babe Ruth

“I don’t suppose anybody knows how Hector Smiley fixed the disruptions his watch caused,” said Oscar when the story was done.

“Sadly, his techniques are lost to history,” confirmed Mr. Veeder.

“So I’ll have to figure that part out on my own,” said Oscar to himself. “Do you know anything else about the watch, Mr. Veeder?” he pressed.

“Just a little,” Mr. Veeder said as he retrieved a lockbox from the bottom drawer of a display cabinet. “I have the packing material it came in. The thief left that behind.”

From the lockbox, Mr. Veeder extracted a sealed plastic freezer bag. Inside the bag was a crumbling crayon box. “This is the box it was stored in,” he said. Humdinger School Crayons read the label. Eight colors. Apex of Quality. From the box, he extracted a handful of crumpled newspaper, brittle and yellow. “And this is the paper it was wrapped in.”

Gently, Oscar took it. The folds and creases left over from when it had swaddled the watch were now soft, fibrous, faded, and in a few places torn.

The Mt. Etna Evening Eagle, it read. April 11, 1935. There were stories in the paper about the dustbowl in Oklahoma and about a shark somebody had caught in Florida. There was one about the fire department rescuing a cat from a tree. And then a tattered column proclaimed: Local Sixth Grader Strikes out Babe Ruth!

This article about baseball grabbed Oscar’s attention. He scanned what was left of the text:

As the barnstorming Boston Braves completed their preseason tour with a game against the minor league Mt. Etna Mountaineers, Mr. George Herman Ruth, the Bambino, the Sultan of Swat, the Babe, received one of the biggest surprises of his career when Mt. Etna’s favorite pitcher, twelve-year-old

Here, a swatch of mailing tape obscured the rest of story. Oscar stuck his fingernail underneath to peel it back. The paper began to rip.

“Believe me,” said Mr. Veeder, “the museum staff has tried everything. It won’t come off. Since the rest of the story is hidden under there, there’s nothing anybody can do.”

“But—” said Oscar.

“However,” continued Mr. Veeder, “if you look at the bottom, you can read the last half of the last sentence.”

after the strikeout, never pitched again.

“Interesting,” said Oscar. “I guess.”

“As a museum curator, I think every single detail connected to every object in my collection is extremely interesting!” said Mr. Veeder.

“What do you think it means, then?” asked Oscar.

“I think it means Hector Smiley must have been in Mt. Etna around the time that game was played,” said Mr. Veeder. “Otherwise, how would he have gotten the local newspaper?”

“What was he doing in Mt. Etna?” wondered Oscar.

“Dropping off the watch at the museum, is my guess,” said Mr. Veeder.

“But we already knew that watch got dropped off at the museum. So this doesn’t really get us anywhere, does it?” mused Oscar.

“You’d have to ask someone who’s been around longer than I have,” said Mr. Veeder.

“Thank you, Mr. Veeder,” said Oscar.

Oscar hopped onto his bike.

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